China
Daqiao Yao Ethnic Township School
Lanshan County, Yongzhou City, Hunan Province
Located in Daqiao Yao Ethnic Township near the border of Hunan Province and Guangdong Province, Daqiao School is about 25 miles away from the center of Lanshan County. The remote location of the school in the mountains makes the transportation to and from the school very difficult. The school was first established in late 1960s. After the merger of central elementary school and middle school in 1994, Daqiao School became a school with students in grades K-9.
Daqiao school has 48 staff members and 19 classes with 823 students. Among them, 625 students, who constitute about 76 percent of all students, are left-behind children whose parents have gone to work in more developed cities in eastern China. The school is committed to inheriting traditional ethnic culture and educating a new generation in modern era. Positioned in a region where most people are from Yao ethnic minority, the school has designed courses which feature traditional Yao culture. Students can choose courses such as Yao long drum dance, bamboo stick dance, Yao songs, embroidery, and handcraft, etc. Through these courses, students can learn to appreciate the nurturing traditional culture in the region. The school has put emphasis on cultivating students’ DIY abilities by organizing extra-curricular groups focusing on handcraft. Old and useless items are utilized in such programs which not only allow students to put their imagination into works but also teach them the importance of protecting our environment. In this process, students can build their self-confidence as well as interest in studying.
Disadvantaged by the remote location and underdevelopment of the region, the school has utilized many platforms to get support from the society to develop the school. In this school, the broadcasting system, computers, laundry machines, books, and all the students’ clothes, shoes and school bags were donated by people who care about the situation and the future of the school.
Jian Jia Po School
Sangzhi County, Zhangjiajie City, Hunan Province
Jian Jia Po School is located in remote mountainous area in northwest border of Sangzhi County, about 33.6 miles away from the center of the county. With students from grades 1-9, the school has 32 staff members and 383 students, including 133 students in elementary school level and 250 in middle school level. Among them, 98 percent of the students are from Tujia ethnic minority while others are from Miao ethnic minority and Hui ethnic minority.
The school has aimed at the goals of nurturing students with responsibility, sunny disposition, and patriotism. It has built its educational model oriented towards the needs of all students, multi-tiered education, and the academic excellence of every student. The school not only ensures the success of gifted students but also seeks to improve the academic performance of students at different levels and from different backgrounds. It has made sure no student is left behind while successfully sending almost one third of its students who graduate from junior middle school to the best high school in the county.
Liang Shui Jing Town Central Primary School
Yuanling County, Huaihua City, Hunan Province
Liang Shui Jing Town Central Primary School (Cool Well Town Central Primary School) locates in the suburb 5 miles to the south of Yuanling County. The school has 99 staff members and 29 classes with over 1400 students. The mission of the school is to ensure that every child has a bright childhood and every teacher has a happy life. The school is committed to nurturing students with individual characters, teachers with thoughts, and to building a school with souls.
Positioned in an area with affluent water resource, the school has oriented it around the culture originating from water in order to build a school with good quality as the water that has nurtured local people. In the school, all the kids are motivated to be “small water drops” which symbolize their outstanding performance in the school. The teachers have designed a special course based on the traditional Chinese idiom that says “constant dripping wears away a stone”. The course teaches students the importance of persistence in learning and achieving goals in their lives.
In order to develop students’ individual characters and special skills, the school has organized 18 extra-curricular groups that focus on vocal music, fine arts, dance, magic, badminton, electronic organ, table tennis, spoken English, calligraphy, handcraft, Chinese chess, basketball, as well as technology, specimen preparation, small inventions, and environmental observation. The school also keeps its traditional ethnic entertaining activities such as spinning tops and rolling hoops. The four groups which aim at cultivating students’ interest in technology have been the earliest and most fruitful ones in the school. They are recognized at county, city, provincial and national level for the essays written by students on technology innovation and environmental protection, and the inventions proposed by students such as new highway guardrail.
Liang Shui Jing Town Middle School
Yuanling County, Huaihua City, Hunan Province
Established in 1968, Liang Shui Jing Town Middle School (Cool Well Town Middle School) is located in the suburb in the south of Yuanling County. The school is well positioned in a town with 64 villages and 65,000 populations and abundant students. It has 67 staff members and 9 classes with 454 students.
The school has been blending the traditional culture with modern education by designing courses based on Chinese classics such as Di Zi Gui (Standards for being a Good Pupil and Child), San Zi Jing (Three Character Classic), Qian Zi Wen (Thousand Character Classic), and Confucian Analects. These courses are tailored to inspire students’ interest in classics, internalize the education into students’ behavior, and cultivate their personality and mind.
The school has introduced student self-management system which allow students to experience social life in the way citizens do in the society. It has created an environment for students to participate in the management of school and the proposition and organization of events. All the major student activities are designed, managed, and developed by students themselves, from which the need for the development of students’ individual characters is to greatest extent met. Through this process of active participation and practical experience, all students could learn to be responsible and capable citizens and become the best cultivators of brightness and happiness in their lives.
Li Zhi Xi Primary School
Yuanling County, Huaihua City, Hunan Province
Li Zhi Xi Primary School (Litchi Creek Primary School) in Guanzhuang Town was established in 1942. Before 1949, years of wars had ravaged ordinary people’s lives and the school was shut down. After 1949, the school had changed many locations until in 2002 it moved to Litchi Creek Village besides the creek surrounded by mountains with thriving bamboos.
The school has 28 staff members and 7 classes with 311 students. Among the students, 263 of them live in the school while studying. Dealing with the situation of remote location, small size of the school with lots of boarding students, the school strives to build a boarding school in which teachers could feel comfortable, students could live and study happily, parents could be reassured, and the public’s expectation could be satisfied.
It is committed to becoming a joyful garden for every child who is left behind by his or her parents working in other parts of China. As a boarding primary school, it emphasizes the importance of good habits and details to students’ future lives. It has designed courses that focus on students’ psychological health, extra-curricular activities, and active cooperation among students, etc. Every Wednesday, the school would turn its computer lab into a special classroom in which boarding students can video chat with their parents and build family bonding.
Qi Jia Ping Town School
Yuanling County, Huaihua City, Hunan Province
Qi Jia Ping Town School is located in the northeast border of Yuanling County, which is about 78 miles away from the center of the county. It was first established in mid-1930s and had since changed its name many times. In 2007, Qi Jia Ping Town Middle School and Primary School merged into the current combination school with grades from Pre-K through 9th grade.
The school has 93 staff members and 28 classes with 1312 students. Besides these students, there are 200 pre-kindergarten kids. Emphasizing the importance of reading, the school has provided relatively abundant reading resource to students. With total volumes of books as many as 49,000, every student on average has 40.8 books. To encourage students to read more books, every classroom is equipped with a bookshelf and every class has a reading session in the reading room each week.
To Qi Jia Ping Town School, the change of an underdeveloped school is not just to improve students’ academic performance, but also to make them happier and more positive in their lives through the influence of education. Chinese students are always told by the teachers how to better survive in the competition of the cruel world. But no one cares about the happiness of students. Qi Jia Ping Town School is committed to making happy studying into a reality. “Our education is not molding screws which the societal machine needs, but helping the children to pursue real happiness in their lives.”
Tao Hua Jiang Primary School
Taojiang County, Yiyang City, Hunan Province
Established in 1941, Tao Hua Jiang Primary School (Peach Blossom River Primary School) now has 128 staff members and 50 classes with 3069 students.
In the past, due to the disadvantaged conditions of the school, many students are weary of studying and many teachers are weary of teaching. In order to change this situation, the school strives to cultivate an environment in which teachers and students could both be happy and students could learn to enjoy, create, and disseminate happiness through education. Based on the idea of “only happy teachers could nurture happy children”, the school has committed to “happy education” which will orient teachers and students toward life-long happiness. It strives to cultivate elegant, open-minded, reasonable, and healthy citizens in the society.
The school has tailored “growth plan” for teachers to improve their thinking, morality and professional knowledge. It has also made six goals for students to develop positive personalities, healthy body, good habits, and to nurture their special skills along with abilities in oral communication and the art of calligraphy. The school has 33 extra-curricular groups in which students could build up their abilities as well as manifest their individual characters. Students are encouraged to participate in happy activities such as one song each day, one reading each day, and one dance each day. Special happy courses are designed by the school for students to discuss topics centered on positive self and positive emotions. These courses embrace the ideas of real, interactive, flexible, innovative and happy ways of teaching and communicating. The school also introduces positive psychology courses designed by School of Social Science in Tsinghua University and invites instructors from this institution to the school’s classrooms. Besides that, the school holds annual festivals featuring arts, chorus, sports, soccer, technology and reading from which students could enjoy the happiness of studying.
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